


This Hollow Filled With Fire

by entanglednow



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Demonic Corporations Work Differently, Getting Together, M/M, Pining, Sad, Secrets, suggestions of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:40:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24677824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: Crowley has never told Aziraphale. He hasn't told the angel a lot of things, but this truth has become more important of late.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 123
Kudos: 471





	This Hollow Filled With Fire

**Author's Note:**

> This contains a brief description of purposeful self-starvation, accidental self-harm, and one sexually explicit sentence.

Crowley has never told Aziraphale.

He hasn't told the angel a lot of things, but this truth has become more important of late.

Heaven is - or at least it was - a place where you were filled to the brim with sensation and presence, all the time. Crowley hadn't been in a material form at that point, but he remembers how _much_ of everything there had been, infinite wavelengths of light, and sound, and purpose. There had been so many of them then, choirs upon choirs, harmonious and endless and unified, surrounded by Her love, certain and ceaseless and overflowing with glory. 

Crowley remembers.

They all remember.

After - after the Fall, everything was different. After they'd all eventually stopped burning, stopped screaming and twisting, and breaking, every good thing inside them finally ripped free - leaving raw edges that wept and bled for centuries after. None of them had known, at the start, that there even would be an end to it, that they wouldn't just keep Falling forever. Though the end had still seemed like long ages after it began, a stretched-out eternity of fire and agony, before they all finally hit the ground. 

There was eventually an end - and then there was a new beginning. 

They'd had barely any time after their arrival in Hell to consider their new, wretched aspects, their new animal natures, before they were crammed awkwardly into bodies made of matter and flesh, before they were filled with bones and blood and told that they were now demons, that they were _enemies_ and _adversaries_. They'd been forced to learn how to move themselves around, how to communicate, and defend themselves, with no real understanding, or frame of reference, for how their new bodies worked. They hadn't understood, not yet, that they were now broken, empty things, that their new forms were unfinished, intrinsically corrupt and wrong. Filled with nothing but a long memory of pain, and the ruin of everything they used to be.

For all that they'd started as sexless, immortal, non-corporeal beings, without needs, or desires, they learned very quickly that humanity was something very different. They were always feeling something, always in need of something, either too much or too little - heat, cold, hunger, anger, fear, lust, despair. And the easiest way to tempt them was to understand that, was to be all the things they might need, to know all the things they were afraid of, to be all the weaknesses that brought them to their knees.

But it still took a while for them to understand that they didn't _feel_ like humans did.

Crowley's physical body barely feels anything, the angular thinness of it is wretchedly numb. His skin is ambivalent to anything but the harshest of blows from his fellow demons, to the sharpest presses of fangs or claws. It's why so many of them fight, why they gouge at each other, happy to rip pieces of themselves open for that brief, sharp sliver of sensation. Because the pain is the only thing they still feel, and they're strong enough to dig deep, and determined enough to reach it. For all that he hates the fact, Crowley is the same as them, he has no sense of smell, no sense of taste - though he could tell you the exact chemical composition of the air, given the right tongue - the cold tended to make him sluggish and irritable, and the heat sleepy and slow. But he doesn't - he can't feel them.

Not knowing things felt like a weakness, and Crowley had never approved of either of those two things. He'd spent centuries upon centuries learning what things _should_ feel like, the way humans felt them. It had seemed like an impossible task, humans had so many ways to be vulnerable, so many ways to hurt each other, to wound each other. But Crowley had learned well enough that he can fake it reliably, he can act like he feels it, he can react to the sting of a hand across his cheek, or the chill of Winter air. He can groan a pretence of pleasure, and bend under the caress of a lover, or he can cower and gasp in pain in the same position. He knows exactly how long he should wait before he can drink boiling water, and exactly the right pressure to use to grip the hand of a child. 

It's the reason he likes being drunk so much, he supposes, because the dizzy, confused euphoria, the amusement, the misery, the unsteady lurch and sway of it all. It's like living long moments of real sensation.

At the beginning it had been difficult to keep track, so many humans so fast, all of them bright little pincushions just waiting to stab themselves to death.

But it hadn't mattered, because from the moment Crowley had met Aziraphale, the angel had felt things for him. He'd always been so eager to proclaim things hot, or cold, soft or hard, prickly, slippery, fluffy, rough, sticky, smooth - he'd describe them all with a sort of innocent delight. A wealth of information given freely, joyfully. It had left Crowley fascinated and charmed, and utterly lost. Especially when the angel started tasting things for him too, so many things over the years, and Crowley would lean in and make him describe them, make him name the textures, the aromas, the flavours, and his feelings and opinions on it all. Aziraphale would blush and scold him, and then do it anyway. Much to his constant delight.

Crowley was in love, and the fact that he could feel that, that he could have that, and all the delicious pain, and amusement, and joy that came with it, all wrapped up in desperate, endless longing. That had felt like a small, spiteful victory, something that was just for him, something he'd hidden away from Hell, stuffed deep and hoarded for himself.

He'd had millennia to learn that the only things he was allowed to feel, as a demon, were the things that hurt him. The twisting, gnawing ache in his corporation when he made it real, then refused to feed it. The stabbing, puncturing bite of his own fangs at night, when he'd wake in the confusing writhe of his own coils, having attacked parts of his body that never really felt connected to him. Not to mention the tearing, spreading burn of his very essence tearing itself apart, that was the touch of consecrated ground. 

But Crowley had accepted it, more or less. Because there was Aziraphale, who did nothing but feel, all the time, who was gentle, and good, and stubborn, and soft - and Crowley felt so many things when he was near him.

Until the both of them had put a boy-sized wrench in the Great Plan, and everything didn't end in fire, but continued on, started running again. Aziraphale had taken his hand, the shift and slide of Crowley's fingers telling him that the angel had _squeezed it_. He'd said his name, soft like a question, and then kissed him. 

Aziraphale loved him back.

And now - now Aziraphale wants to touch him. Crowley can sense it, it's a whisper under his useless skin, a quiet and contemplative hunger for touch, the soft, familiar, eagerness of tentative desire. They've kissed, so many times now, and Crowley has been more than content, has been happy beyond measure, to have the angel close, to have the soft sounds he makes when he's brave enough to reach out and touch Crowley. A smile on his face at the daring, as if it delights him every time. Crowley desperately wants to ask what he feels like to Aziraphale, if his skin is cold to the touch, if it feels dead and lifeless under his fingers? But a larger part of him is afraid of the answer, so he doesn't - he can't - he's too much of a coward. Instead he lifts his own hand, and touches the angel's cheek in turn, and he imagines that it's impossibly soft, and smooth, and warm.

How is Crowley supposed to tell him that he doesn't feel it when Aziraphale takes his hand and squeezes? When he leans close to press the faint wetness of his mouth to Crowley's jaw, his cheek, the shifting openness of his own mouth. That it's like physical static, as much as he loves him, as much as he _wants_ him. As much as he wants to feel everything Aziraphale chooses to give him.

How is he supposed to tell the angel, that if he wants Crowley to feel it, to really _feel_ his touch, then the angel needs to hurt him. He needs to split his skin open with his affection. He needs to tighten his grip until blood vessels burst, bury his teeth into the muscle of Crowley's body, to clench hands in his hair until his scalp tears. He needs to lay an _'I love you,'_ in blood across Crowley's skin. He needs to bury his fingers in the meat of his jaw until it unhinges and cracks. He needs to prise Crowley's mouth open wide, to hold it on the edge of breaking, press his cock all the way inside, and then fuck his throat until it bruises, and clenches, in waves of bright sensation -

It's intolerable. Because Crowley can't tell him any of that. He cannot ask for any of that. Not from Aziraphale.

The worst part is - the worst part is that the thought arouses him, the worst part is that he _wants_ it. Because he knows that Aziraphale is strong enough to make him feel, and part of him is so fucking desperate for that. Crowley wants that, he wants so badly to feel Aziraphale. He wants the angel to love him enough to dig beneath the skin and _touch_ him. But he's afraid of Aziraphale finding out, of him realising the awful truth, that Crowley feels nothing. Which leaves him considering whether to say that he doesn't want to have sex at all, that he's not interested in physical pleasure. 

He almost never lies to Aziraphale, rarely ever even bends the truth. But he thinks it would be easier, in a way, or perhaps kinder - and Satan forbid the angel ever catches him being kind - but it is. It's kinder than letting him discover that Crowley is performing for him, that he's pretending for him. 

He's spent so long in love with Aziraphale, watching him through the centuries and memorising everything about him, every expression, every sound, every moment of fondness. He'd never thought that the angel would ever look back. Never thought that he'd ever see Crowley as something worth loving.

But now Aziraphale actually loves him back, and it's enough.


End file.
